


Silence & Noise

by neontiger55



Category: White Collar
Genre: Bromance, Friendship, Gen, Stakeouts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-29
Updated: 2012-09-29
Packaged: 2017-11-15 07:13:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,448
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/524581
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/neontiger55/pseuds/neontiger55
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Peter and Neal endure a stakeout together.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Silence & Noise

**Author's Note:**

> Spoilers: Mild spoilers for Neighbourhood Watch, and 4.03.

 

 

Humid night air drifted into the car as Peter climbed back inside, the discordant clamor of rush hour traffic flaring, then dying as he slammed his door shut.  He pulled something from the paper bag he was carrying and threw it in Neal’s direction. Neal stared down at the object that had landed in his lap unceremoniously before he looked back at Peter. “What is this?”  
  
“What?”  
  
Neal held the tepid ball of aluminum foil at arms length. “This.”  
  
“Dinner,” Peter replied flatly through a mouthful of his own food, reaching over to tune the radio back to the game from the reading of  _The Glass Menagerie_  Neal had been listening to in his absence. Neal bristled as the voices of the commentators interrupted the moment when the Wingfield’s apartment plunges into darkness and the rain comes to a sudden halt. Peeling the wrapper apart, Neal eyed the contents suspiciously, until an unidentifiable sauce stared leaking from the foil and ran down his thumb, viscous and oily. He closed the foil quickly. “Weren’t you going to go to that deli around the corner?”  
  
“That place looked pretentious.” Peter waved his free hand dismissively. “Too many hipsters with architecturally significant hair. Found a real sandwich joint on the other side of the street.”  He pointed at Neal’s sub happily. “That’s got four types of meat in it.”  
  
Neal wrinkled his nose. “Do you know _which_ four?”  
  
“It’s the House Special,” Peter shrugged, as though that was explanation enough. He paused before taking another bite. “What? You're not gonna eat that?”  
  
Neal gestured to their surroundings. “Here, in the car? It’s all leaky.”  
  
“Oh, for the love of – ” Peter rummaged around in the driver’s side pocket, eventually pulling out an old, crumpled copy of  _The Times._  He placed it on Neal’s lap with a sarcastic flourish. “There. A tablecloth. Now eat your food.”  
  
“Oh, yeah, I can really see how you wooed Elizabeth,” Neal said. “ _Such_ sophistication.”  
  
Peter exhaled sharply. “I gave you the choice between the car or the van, and you chose the car – ”  
  
“Because the van smells.”  
  
“ – so here we are. I can call Hughes if you want, see if there’s space for one more? I think Jones said they were getting fish tacos – ”  
  
“You wouldn’t.”  
  
“I really would.”  
  
Neal quickly fell silent, knowing he was fighting a losing battle. The roar of a cheering crowd sounded from the radio, fading in and out under a layer static that seemed impossible to tune out completely.  “You get a little cranky when Elizabeth doesn’t pack you devilled ham,” he muttered, pushing the newspaper onto the floor lest the newsprint damaged his suit. He placed the…whatever it was, on the dashboard for safekeeping. Evidence in his cruelty lawsuit. He rested his head against the cool window, listening to the muted hum of the city outside, searching for some semblance of calm. He knew that underneath it all, Peter was as keen as he was to be rid of their current case. It was one of the least interesting they had worked in Neal's time with the bureau; the suspects had no flair, no creativity, just, unfortunately for the FBI, a stunning amount of good luck. This was the third time in as many days that he and Peter had parked in an innocuous side street and waited, and their patience was wearing thin.  
  
“I don’t even know why I need to be here,” Neal said, when the lull had stretched on for too long, his breath leaving a wisp of condensation on the glass. “It really takes two people to verify that the suspect stays in on a Friday night with a box of doughnuts and a six pack of cheap beer?”  
  
Peter sighed, crumpling his sandwich wrapper into a ball. “Yes. Especially if that suspect is waiting for a delivery of counterfeit American dollars from his buddies in Newark.”  
  
Neal scoffed. “The only delivery he’s waiting for is his pizza.”  
  
“Then that’s what you’ll put in your report form,” Peter said, pointing to the clipboard Neal had long since abandoned in the footwell of the car, its pages splayed out at odd angles from the fall.  
  
Neal shrugged and ran a finger through a fogged patch on the window. He made it to the first ‘e’ in ‘regime’ before he heard Peter take a deep, calming breath. "Look, I'm sorry this suspect doesn't live up to your high expectations, that he doesn’t swan around in thousand dollar suits, chasing models in more exciting locations than Bushwick. But this is the job. Not everyone can live a life of crime with the same finesse that you do.  _Did_."  
  
Neal beamed.  
  
Peter reddened. "That wasn’t a compliment."  
  
Neal was about to disagree, but –  "You really think this suit looks like it only cost a thousand dollars?"  
  
Peter rolled his eyes skywards as though seeking some kind of divine intervention. Neal smoothed a hand over the fabric of his jacket defensively.  
  
“It’s Tom For – ” he started, but trailed off when he saw Peter's expression had taken on the appearance of a constipated bulldog, the one that told Neal he was about to be banished to the van for the remainder of the night. He turned back to look out of the window, consciously aware of Peter glaring at the back of his head.  
  
  
*  
  
  
Neal shifted his weight in his seat trying to ease the ache in his lower back and calm the tension in his legs.The pile of origami figures he had been making and discarding for the past few hours rustled under his feet as he moved.  He'd never been very good at sitting still, but prison had made him eternally restless, anxiety building whenever he was caught in one place for a little too long; the car or the van, it didn't really make a difference, the airlessness, the confinement, was just enough to set his nerves on edge.  Leaning forward, Neal rested his forehead against the cool plastic of the dashboard, letting out an exaggerated sigh. The incomprehensible chatter of sports commentary continued to blare from the radio like white noise, driving any clear thought from his mind. He reached across to turn it off, only to have Peter slap his hand away firmly. They still weren’t talking, apparently.

“You think this drop off is ever going to happen?” he risked asking a moment later, face still pressed against the dash.  
  
“I don’t know. Maybe,” came Peter’s reply.  
  
Neal straightened up, leaning back against the headrest and closing his eyes. Light drops of summer rain had started to fall, pattering against the roof and windshield, and Neal could imagine the air outside was filling with the scent of ozone escaping wet asphalt. That smell always reminded him of being a kid, hiding under a canopy of trees or a shop awning during the rainy season as he killed time after school. He loved how quiet the streets became as the rain took the heat from the air.  
  
"This isn't the worst stakeout I’ve ever had, y'know."  
  
Neal opened his eyes and glanced at Peter, surprised to find his expression was soft and wistful. He wondered if Peter had been thinking of some far away memory too. "It’s not?" Neal thought for a moment. "Oh, that one time in Montenegro?"  
  
"What?"  
  
"With the goat?"  
  
"With the  _what_?"  
  
Neal straightened in his seat. "That wasn't you?"  
  
" _What_ wasn't me?"  
  
"Never mind."  
  
"Do I want to know?"  
  
"Probably not."  
  
Peter eyed him suspiciously and Neal did his best to project wide-eyed innocence in the face of his scrutiny. " _Anyway,_ " Peter eventually continued. "It was on a case about fifteen years ago, long before you. We were tracking this smuggler of Hellenistic artifacts who worked out of New York. He had a bit more style than our guy up in the apartment there, but not much.”  
  
“He was no Nick Halden, huh?”  
  
“He was not.” Peter smiled ruefully. “So, this guy was moving priceless figurines stolen from museums all over Europe through the US, storing them in his loft until he found a buyer. All we had to do was connect him to a local fence or catch him moving the pieces and it would be case closed. We sat in this tiny little van – ”  
  
“Smaller than  _the_  van?”  
  
“Oh, yeah. And no AC or fancy equipment either.  But we sat in that van outside his place and waited. The agents I was working with had been in the job too long and had lost interest in the basics of police work -- just spent all their time bitching about their wives. They couldn’t even be bothered to leave the van to take a leak, just used empty drinks bottles.”  
  
Neal scrunched his face up in disgust. “Seriously?”  
  
“Learned to be very careful about what you drank,” Peter said with a shiver. “We were there for a full week and nothing happened. The lights were on, blinds were half-open, TV was blaring, but nobody went in or out of that apartment.”  
  
Neal’s mind skipped ahead. “Ah, he Macaulay Culkined you? Snuck out another way while making it look like he was there the whole time?”  
  
Peter shook his head. "No. He’d slipped in the shower and died. We could have been sitting there for a very long time if his neighbour hadn’t called the cops.”  
  
Neal stifled a burst of surprised laughter. “That’s…really not funny.”  
  
Peter tried unsuccessfully to contain his own mirth. “No. No, it’s not. Especially for the officers who discovered him. But at least the call allowed us to enter his apartment and seize all evidence in plain sight, so there was that.”  
  
“So, go on, what’s the moral of this story?” Neal asked.  
  
“What do you mean?”  
  
“Peter, your stories always have morals.”  
  
“They do not.”  
  
Neal shot him a wry look. “Your retelling of Satchmo’s pigeon chase last week was almost Biblical.”  
  
“Okay. All right.” Peter held up his hands. “The moral of the story is….be grateful that.…I have a lovely wife and a strong bladder?”  
  
“That’s all you’ve got?”  
  
“Be….careful where you leave the soap?” Peter said, his forehead furrowed in thought. “No? I’ll keep working on it."  
  
“You do that.”  
  
They fell quiet for a moment before sudden realisation bloomed in Peter’s expression and he looked at Neal sharply. “When did you say you were in Montenegro again?”  
  
  
*  
  
  
The night deepened and the tempo of the city changed. Groups of twenty and thirty-somethings chatted loudly to each other as they passed by, their excitement fuelled by one too many glasses of wine and whatever drama had unfolded earlier in the evening. A young couple had a passionate argument near the intersection. An elderly couple strolled slowly down the block, arm in arm, walking their Dachshund in the stagnant heat of the summer air.  
  
A miasma of calm had fallen over the car, and Neal found himself content to watch the city at its quietest point, the streets a little less busy, every action or word more pronounced.  
  
Sometime before dawn a drunk man tumbled out of a bar behind where they were parked and wandered past singing  _When A Man Loves A Woman_  with the kind of heartfelt sincerity only achieved by the deeply inebriated. Neal caught Peter’s eye and laughed. “He’s actually in key, at least.”  
  
Peter snorted. “He sounds like El’s uncle Roger at our wedding.” At Neal’s raised eyebrow, he shook his head. “You don’t want to know. Let’s just say an open bar was a terrible idea by all accounts.”  
  
The man stumbled across the street and around the corner, his voice carrying down the block. Neal followed the man’s unsteady progress until he disappeared from sight, but he could feel Peter studying him.  
  
“So, where did you learn to sing?” Peter asked.  
  
Neal ducked his head. “I didn’t really learn. Just sort of picked it up.” He kept his tone light and evasive; it wasn’t something he’d thought about in a long time. But Peter was still looking at him, waiting for him to continue, softly demanding. “My mom cleaned motel rooms for a living, and sometimes I would go with her so she could get them done quicker, y’know? She loved all those old soul records – The Miracles, Marvin Gaye, Smokey – and on her good days, we’d listen to a radio station that played the classics while we cleaned. I guess it just sunk in.”  
  
Peter nodded, and Neal could see he was processing his words, rolling them around in his mind in the same careful way he would handle a piece of evidence. “Hard to imagine you with a little pair of cleaning gloves,” Peter quipped, but there was no sting in it.  
  
“Hey, I could clean an entire room in twelve minutes flat,” Neal countered. “One of my many, many talents.”  
  
“When was the last time you saw her?”   
  
Neal smiled to keep any real emotion from his expression. “A long time ago, Peter,” he said, trying to ignore the memories that flittered on the periphery of his mind. The vacant look on his mother’s face. Ellen’s voice wavering. The slam of a door and the sharp rush of cold night air. It was at times like this that Neal could feel the brittleness of everything he’d spent years piecing together, like running his finger over centuries old paint. He could feel how easy it was for Peter to break through and how easy it would be to let him.  
  
But for all he could do with words, Neal still didn’t know how to articulate these things, to state them as the facts they were without inviting pity or sympathy. He didn’t like to be the cause of the heaviness in a conversation, to make people breakaway and leave. Sharing things with Peter, though, was different. Peter wouldn't leave or disconnect because something was awkward. He didn't press on old wounds to satisfy his own curiosity. It always left Neal grateful and unsettled, like waiting for a punch line that never comes.  
  
“Well,” Peter said, reaching for the radio, his voice warm. “I’m sure we can find some Motown on here somewhere.”  
  
“I’m not serenading you, Peter,” Neal laughed, relieved to have sidestepped the conversation. He affected a look of faux outrage. “What would Elizabeth say?”  
  
“She would say, do you know the words to  _Take Me to the River_  and when can you start cleaning our house?’”  
  
Neal huffed in half-hearted indignation. Settling back in his seat, he listened to the chop-chop-chop of music and voices and silence as Peter continued searching through the stations.  
  
Some nights weren’t so bad. 

 

 

 

 

_End._


End file.
